


this was a home once

by witandwisdom



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 18:57:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15443643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witandwisdom/pseuds/witandwisdom
Summary: When the dust settles, Sara and Ava have both lost their families, technically.





	this was a home once

I.  
Rip’s gone, leaving Ava to deal with not only the mess of the Time Bureau that’s left, but with the fallout of her finding out she’s a clone, by herself. She doesn’t mind handling things alone; after all, she'd always believed that if you want something done right, you do it yourself. But now she has to push away any lingering thoughts in the back of her head that wonder and hope for there to be more to the story-for there to be more to her-than number twelve in Rip’s morally gray at best recruiting tactics. With him likely died any more answers she was looking for, (he never was the sharing type) and she just needs to accept that and try to move on. 

But as hard as she tries, she still wakes up at night in a cold sweat from another memory that isn’t hers: playing basketball in high school, game nights with her family on New Year’s when she was a kid, her dad’s lasagna that she craved when she was home from college. She gets more upset than she probably should be when she realizes that she didn’t actually graduate from Stanford. She’d always been especially proud of that. But it doesn’t matter now because it wasn’t real, no matter how many documents Rip faked or actors he paid. 

Despite her best efforts, she can’t move past it by pushing everything down and ignoring it. So she makes a rash decision, calls off of work for the weekend, and heads out to Fresno. Sara had given her a worried look when she told her she was going, but she ignored it. She also had offered to come with her, but Ava refused. Sara kept her grounded, sure, but Sara was also a part of her life that she was so certain was real that she couldn’t bear to bring her into the parts of her that never existed. Sara was her anchor to reality, and bringing her with would have only tainted the one thing she felt that she could hold onto when everything around her was so clearly falling apart. 

So she portals to a discreet location in Fresno to avoid being detected, and heads to what she used to consider to be home before she loses her nerve. But even when Ava walks up to the door, she still stops before she gets the chance to knock. She half-wonders if this was a bad idea, if she should leave and never come back. But after a few moments, she knows that she needs to go in. She needs to see the place where so many of her fabricated memories take place, and break the spell that they hold over her. For some reason, she just knows that walking around the place where she didn’t grow up, with that knowledge, will end any fantasy she might have about the life she didn’t live. Any fantasy that maybe Rip was lying, or that 2213 didn’t happen. She hates it-the wishing part of her that makes the revelation hurt even more-and she needs to kill it. And to kill it, she needs to see this place for what it really is. So she knocks. 

Not even a few moments later, the door swings open and her “mom” stands on the other side. She’s clearly taken aback, but almost immediately breaks into a smile. “Ava, sweetie, this is a pleasant surprise!” she says before moving in for a hug, which Ava stiffly avoids. She sees it now. The smile is too warm, her eyes never sparkling like she thought they did in her memories. She knows it’s because she’s acting, trying to be the loving mother she’s paid to be, and it digs into Ava.

“Don’t,” Ava says tiredly, and the woman’s face changes to one of confusion. Something on Ava’s face must give her away though, because it quickly evolves into one of realization. She starts to say something else, an explanation maybe, but Ava just gives her a sharp look and she clams up immediately. Walking past her, she heads upstairs to where she remembers her bedroom being. 

It’s light blue and gray, with the bed pushed up against the back wall, and absolutely spotless. Ava’s always been a clean and organized person, but she can’t help but think bitterly that this room just looks like it’s never been lived in. Because it hasn’t. 

She runs her fingers over the various trophies and awards on the shelves, thinking about what each one used to represent to her. She has to admire the effort that went into creating her cover, though she supposes it’s easier to create an entire fake life when there’s really only one person you need to convince that it’s real, even if the person is that whose life it’s supposed to be. 

Finally, she reaches the bed, and she sits on the end. Ava feels tears coming to her eyes, and for once, she chooses to let them fall. Sobs wrack her body, and she mourns. She mourns for herself, and wishes she didn’t know. 

 

II.  
Sara uses her stolen (but now Time Bureau approved) time courier to go back to 2018, a few weeks after her father dies. A few weeks for her, anyways. She arrives a week after he died in Star City time, but she needed a little more time than that before she could bring herself to go back. She doesn’t consider herself to be okay in any way, shape, or form, but after losing so many people, she’s learned how to put one foot in front of the other while falling apart. For the most part. At the very least, she wants to get her father’s belongings (and everything she and Laurel had left behind) from his house before the city did God-knows-what with it. 

She knows that the Laurel from Earth-2 had been staying with him, but Sara doesn’t exactly trust her. Meeting her at the hospital had been bizarre, even for her, and she could tell that the woman she spoke to was far from her sister. She partly thinks it’s for the best, because she knows deep down that holding somebody that isn’t her sister up to the standard that her Laurel had set would be impossible and inevitably leave her disappointed, but she had still hoped. 

She knows that Oliver had went and gotten himself locked up, so she doesn’t bother contacting anybody in Star City while she’s there. They’re all dealing with that fallout while still trying to take down Diaz. (Sara wants so, so badly to just kill him herself, but knows she can’t. Time travel has so many stupid, ridiculous rules, and if she wasn’t Captain of the Waverider and dating the Director of the Time Bureau, she’d probably break them all for her family.) She might’ve brought Ava, but Ava had taken a surprise trip out west to deal with her own issues. So she goes alone. 

She walks into the house where she grew up and almost falters. It was eerily silent, and she hated it. Growing up, there was always something going on. Her and Laurel fighting, her parents cooking, watching TV, grading papers, Oliver and Tommy getting themselves into trouble, and so many other things. But now her mother’s gone, Oliver’s locked up, Tommy, Laurel, and her father are dead, and it’s just her standing there in the middle of an empty house that doesn’t feel like home anymore. 

She remembers thinking of this place so often while she was with the League. During a particularly brutal training, she would always come back to this house in her mind to get through it. She remembers telling her dad that she never forgot where she came from, and he could never have known how true that had been. Sara isn’t certain she would’ve been able to stay strong there if she hadn’t been so determined to see her family again one day. She never planned on them seeing her back, but she needed to make sure they were okay. And now none of them were, except for maybe her mother who had run away from it all years ago. Sara feels like she’s going to be sick. 

She finds her way to the couch in the living room, and sits down, putting her head between her hands. She knows she doesn’t deserve a happy ending after everything she’s done, and she can’t help but get angry at the fact that she’s still here when her father and Laurel aren’t. They were the good ones, always fighting on the right side and looking out for those who couldn’t look out for themselves. And now they were dead, and she was still here, absolutely lost trying to keep moving without them. She wishes she could take either one of their places. Why did she get so many second chances when she didn’t deserve them, but they didn’t? 

She sighs, and manages to stand up. This might’ve been her home once, but right now she wants nothing more than to get what she came for and get the hell out.

 

III.  
Ava portals onto the Waverider, specifically, outside of Sara’s room, and she knocks before letting herself in. She learned quickly into their relationship that portaling into Sara’s room directly when she hasn’t called ahead will usually trigger Sara’s self-defense reflexes, and after being pinned down with a knife at her throat more than once before realization kicked in, it just made more sense to knock first. 

When she walks in, she sees Sara sat on her bed, looking at a photo that Ava can’t quite see in a picture frame that she cradles in her hands delicately. She looks up and gives Ava a tired smile before dropping her eyes back down, but she moves slightly to her left, signaling that she wants Ava to join her. Ava sits next to her and looks down at the photo, and her heart sinks.

It’s a picture from when Sara was obviously much younger, her eyes are bright and her smile wide, and she’s surrounded by her family. Her father stands proudly in the middle with an arm around what Ava assumes is Sara’s mother, and on either side stands Laurel and Sara. Everybody in the photo looks so innocent, so unaware of what’s to come for them. Ava feels a pang in her chest, and she can only imagine how Sara must feel, looking at the people that she’s loved and lost. 

Ava coaxes one of Sara’s hands off of the frame and laces their fingers together, and Sara absentmindedly leans her head on Ava’s shoulder. They sit like that in silence for a while, with Ava dropping a kiss on Sara’s forehead every once in a while, before Sara finally speaks. “How was your trip?” 

Ava stiffens immediately, and Sara lifts her head up to look at her with concern. “It…kind of sucked to be honest,” Ava admits. Sara doesn’t say anything, waiting for her to continue. “I went back home. Even though it’s not home, I guess. I just wanted to see it for myself, knowing that it wasn’t real, so it could destroy this illusion in my head about my past.”

Sara rubs her thumb over Ava’s hand. “Did it?” she asks. 

Ava shrugs. “Yeah. I mean, walking around there, seeing those…actors, knowing that none of it was real…it really sunk in,” Ava looks down and takes another breath before continuing. “But it didn’t make me feel better. I think it made me feel worse, actually.”

“I’m so sorry, Ava,” Sara says. She wishes she had something better to offer, some kind of magic words to make Ava’s pain go away, but she doesn’t. She knows better than most that dealing with grief isn’t a process that can be streamlined in any way. So she leans forward, kisses her quickly, and tries to just…be there. 

“I just wish I didn’t know. I wish I never found any of this out. My life wasn’t exactly normal before, and now it feels like I’m barely holding on to what’s real and what isn’t,” Ava says. Sara brings the hand she’s holding to her lips and kisses it softly. 

“You have me,” Sara reminds her, and Ava can’t help but smile. “I’m real. And you’re real too. I know it’s hard baby, but you’re gonna figure this out.” 

Ava gives a weak nod. She doesn’t know if she quite believes Sara just yet, but she knows that holding onto Sara might be the one thing keeping her sane for now, so she squeezes a little tighter. The photo catches her eye from beside Sara where it had been set down, and she motions towards it. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. 

Sara follows her eyes to the picture, and her face immediately darkens. Ava hates to see her in so much pain. 

“I went to my dad’s earlier. To pick up his things, and the stuff Laurel left behind. I saw this there,” Sara says quietly. Ava had been there after Sara got back from Star City a few weeks ago, and she had never seen the other woman as broken as she had been for the following days. She did her best to be there and offer what support she could, but Sara had lost so much already. It was hard to give any comforting words to someone who had been through so much and only seemed to keep losing people. 

“I would’ve come with you-“ Ava starts, but Sara is already shaking her head. 

“No, you had your own stuff to deal with. I wasn’t going to add to that,” Sara responds. Ava immediately frowns. 

“Sara, I want you to come to me with this kind of stuff. I want to help you. You don’t have to go through this on your own,” Ava says earnestly. 

“I could’ve come with you to Fresno,” Sara points out. Ava purses her lips. Sara’s got a point, and Ava doesn’t want to argue with some bad explanation about how it was “something she needed to do herself” because Sara would just use the exact same reasoning against her. 

“Maybe we should start leaning on each other more then,” Ava offers. Sara pauses, and then nods. 

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she responds, and Ava can’t help the jitters that shoot up inside her at that. Sara is infamous for being closed off, but she’s just admitted that she should be letting Ava in. Ava hopes that it’s something they both get better at. 

Sara puts her head back on Ava’s shoulder. “I guess we both lost our families, in a way,” she says, and Ava is struck by how right she is. “We should’ve been there together; at my dad’s and at your parents.” Ava hums in agreement. Before she can respond, there’s a loud crash from outside the room. Sara just sighs, and Ava can’t help but chuckle at the fact that Sara immediately knows that it’s her own crew destroying the ship rather than any invaders. The Legends are truly a…special group. 

“They probably don’t need me to deal with that, right?” Sara asks, and Ava raises her eyebrows as if to say do you want to take that chance? Sara sighs again and stands up, just as her door opens. 

Nate is standing on the other side, sheepishly, and quickly launches into an explanation about the “totally minor accident” that Sara “definitely doesn’t need to worry about”, all whilst Sara gives him a disapproving look. At the end of his rant, Sara just shakes her head and tells him to clean up and not do whatever they were doing again, and Nate scurries off. Sara walks back to the bed and plops down, laying on her back. Ava lays down to join her, smiling at the interaction. 

“You know, I think you might’ve been wrong,” Ava comments, and Sara looks at her incredulously. 

“When?” she asks. 

“When you said we both lost our families,” Ava responds, and Sara looks at her in confusion. “Your dad and Laurel might be gone, but you’ve still got family here, on this ship. Sometimes you find a family, even when you think you haven’t got one left.” 

Sara looks at her thoughtfully, and breaks into a smile. “Yeah, you’re right,” she says. She cuddles in close, Ava’s arm instinctively going around her shoulders and kissing her on the forehead. “They’re your family too, you know. You’re always gonna have me, and you’re gonna have the crew too. Don’t forget that.” 

Ava smiles and tugs Sara a little closer. She was right, they definitely should’ve started with tackling this together. She still feels the hurt and the sadness inside of her like she had at the beginning of the day, but it’s less explosive. She feels more grounded, more sure of moving forward. 

In the end, Ava supposes they’ve both found new homes.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "This Was a Home Once" by Bad Suns. My tumblr is this---is-not--a---dream if you have any thoughts or criticisms!


End file.
